The concept that by encircling the earth with some number of orbiting satellites we can detect, track and destroy incoming missiles with beam weapons, after they are launched but sometime before impact.
In early '85 I saw a TV (debate?) between proponents and opponents of Reagan's Star Wars concept. All the proponents were employed by our Gubmint either as military officers or scientists. Just about without exception, all the scientists spoke with identical Israeli accents. I guess Americans scientists are not smart enough to be in those exalted positions. Time and time again the "scientists" and the military men spoke as if these Buck Roger's weapons were today's reality. But I am to old and smart to believe anymore cuz I heard the same shit about fusion energy for the last 35 years.
Every time I hear the term Star Wars, I get hit with a very severe attack of scientific skepticism. I fear that the philosophers, all of whom are trained "original" thinkers by virtue of years of schooling, are about to lead us down the primrose path again. They are capitalising on the universal fear instilled by the 20,000 plus nuclear bombs in the world, many of which make the original Hiroshima bomb seem like a firecracker. They alone can save us by leading us to the safety of ... Star Wars!
Usually a new weapons system is sold by rhetoric which ostensibly gives us the choice between guns or butter. This time the cost may be so high that the catch words should be beams or bread! A lifetime spent as a disinterested spectator of the arm's race has shown that even when the technology exists, cost overruns on military projects are always incredible. Consider the recent debacle of the Sgt. York (DIVAD) anti-aircraft gun. After 4 years and 1.8 billion dollars the project was cancelled. What will it cost to implement this Buck Rogers concept, called Star Wars, a century or so before its time?
When a technology is forced, the cost is always exorbitant and the usual result is complete failure. Consider the search for fusion energy! Many years ago the fusion philosophers told us that in a decade or two, with the expenditure of a paltry 30 or 40 million, they would give us an experimental fusion reactor. Well, three decades have passed and this country alone has spent a few thousand times this original estimate and we have no controlled fusion. Unless you choose to believe the sporadic news articles that have been released each time the fusion philosophers were about to run out of money. "Gee Whiz guys, we are so close that yesterday we achieved fusion for a nano/pico/micro second." The summer of 1983 saw Professor Lidsky, who heads/headed fusion research at MIT, release a statement to the effect that hydrogen fusion was just not possible. Since that time the crusade for fusion seems to have died. I have heard virtually nothing more about the subject.
Our scientific savants now link our salvation from incoming missiles to a Maginot line of orbiting steel pill-boxes which will detect,track and then discombobulate the little mothers so that they cannot reach their targets. This will be either by direct vaporisation of the missile or by the plasmatising of a pocket of air directly in front of the missile. This skeptic sees as many loose ends flapping in the breeze as there are breezes being generated by the innumerable big mouths of the mostly foreign born Star Wars crusaders.
Are the pill-boxes to be manned or unmanned? I firmly believe that the use of unmanned pill-boxes while executing a brand new technology would be the height of folly. As Androids have yet to be invented and Cyborgs are not yet perfected this leaves the job to men or robots. The only robots that I would trust for so delicate a mission are R2D2 and C-3PO who are, unfortunately, retired in Hollywood and living very comfortably on their royalties from the Star Wars movies. Therefore, technicians are still needed to correct on board oversights and rectify the accidents that plague the best efforts of mice and men! Manned satellites, although they need heavy logistic support, also offer greater security against enemy subversion or sabotage. They absolutely must be manned if they are to be weapons platforms instead of mere detection satellites.
This brings us to the question; how high do it fly? The space race, unlike the invention of the balloon and the airplane, has produced no competition for altitude. Most manned flights with the exception of the Apollo flights have stayed below the 200 mile mark. For some reason, no one seems to be trying to break any altitude records and the news media has ignored this most peculiar aspect of the space race. One upmanship has not been practised here! Until NASA offers some solid evidence I must assume that manned flights are limited to this altitude. I suspect the reason for this is that space is filled with deadly radiation. This radiation called the Solar wind, predicted by Tesla over 75 years ago and then rediscovered by a basement crackpot mathematician in the early 1950's, was finally officially discovered by the Explorer 1 in 1957. It came as another complete surprise to the astro-philosophers.
The solar wind is not a gentle harmless spring shower but a deadly down pour of radiation from which man must forever crouch for protection under the magneto-sphere and ozone layer of the Earth. Extraordinary measures, not publicised, including mirroring and lead shielding must have been taken for the Apollo flights of 20 years ago. * What I cannot understand is how the white space suits could have protected the astronauts from deadly radiation as they scampered around on the Moon in the sunlight. It seems strange that the moon flights were never duplicated. Were these trips kept as much as possible in the shadow of the Earth and Moon? But this cannot be done with pill-boxes trying to keep the whole Earth under surveillance. If the orbits are low many more pill-boxes will be needed to cover the Earth. Conversely, higher orbits need less satellites but will be exposed to ever higher concentrations of radiation.
There are only three types of possible orbits. Geo-synchronous, Polar, and the standard inclined orbit that cuts the equator at some repeatable angle other than 90 degrees. A geo-synchronous satellite is defined as one that maintains its position over the same geographical location. The Earth's rotation dictates that a geo-synchronous satellite can only hover over the equator and physics demands that it must have an altitude higher than 20,000 miles.
When Star Wars was first proposed our great Wazoo muttered something about the need for only a few geo-synchronous satellites. In this orbit, no matter how few equi-distant satellites are needed to girdle the Earth, the polar regions will always be below the satellite's horizon. The north polar region is the Achilles heel of nuclear defence since the circum-polar great circles are the shortest distances from launch site (Russia) to target (USA). At this altitude the minimum distance from satellite to any target would be well over 35,000 miles which makes any possible target much too far away to be hit even if it could be detected.
Manned platforms would be exposed to severe radiation twice each orbit if Polar orbits were used because the Van Allen belt is compressed over the polar regions allowing severe radiation to occur at very low altitudes. I do not believe that it is a matter of chance that the manned flights never seem to pass over the poles. Therefore we must use conventional orbits that skim the polar regions but are still close enough to scan them completely.
An orbital altitude of 200 miles has a horizon about 1200 miles away. The area that this horizon encompasses is vast, however it is but a tiny piece of the whole earth. The number of pill-boxes required for continuous surveillance must now expand to about 50. Fifty manned pill-boxes, all totally dependent on Earth supplies, create a logistic problem that can only be solved by a whole fleet of shuttles in continuous motion. Another minor problem is that in a 200 mile high orbit, our pill-boxes are still in the earth's atmosphere. They are subject to the same forces which degraded Sky Labs orbit, until it finally cascaded back to earth as a shower of fiery debris. The only cure for this is the intermittent but continual expenditure of fuel which creates ... an even greater supply problem.
The next question to be resolved is; what minimum size must our pill-boxes be to successfully play the Star Wars game? The living spaces can be shaved down submarine style, but the machinery and instrumentation required for the detection and tracking will require a great volume of enclosed space. The precision that is required to sight on a moving target that is 600 miles distant is .3 seconds of arc and this is still beyond what is currently electro-mechanically possible. If this is the limit using the entire Earth as a stable platform then what can we expect from yawing, pitching, rolling space platforms. In addition, the accurate determination of both range and bearing will require radar resolution of either unparallelled accuracy or we will need at least two pill-boxes simultaneously fixed on the target.
Oops! The number of pill-boxes multiplies still. Now we seem to need a few hundred of them! The good news is that the maximum range at which our weapons must be effective has been reduced. But as the weapons must be capable of either vaporizing at least a portion of a target, or of plasmatising a large pocket of air, we will need a weapon which will require incredible power. This necessitates either a gigantic power plant or a fantastic electrical storage medium. Either way our pill-boxes have just greatly grown in size. They must now be called space stations in the truest sense of the word. My guesstimate is that they must contain a little more volume than a nuclear sub and a little less than an air craft carrier.
Until the advent of the June '85 Discovery flight and the much publicised Star War's laser test, every time I stated that a laser beam must spread, I was smirked at by even my closest friends. Everybody absolutely knew that a laser is a tight-assed, virginal, parallel beam of coherent light and that it spreads not. Examination of this experiment shows that this laser beam spread from a diameter of 1/4 inch at the Mt. Haleakali observatory to over 30 feet at the target. The range wasn't given so in the interest of fair play, I added to the satellite altitude of 230 miles another 70 miles for a total of 300 miles. At 600 miles range the beam would be twice the size. The decrease in power per unit area at the target is inverse to the difference of the areas involved. This would reduce the destructive power to 1/8,000,000 of that available at the mouth of the laser cannon.
I doubt that the (not quite invented yet) particle beam weapons will be capable of holding a much tighter beam but even if they can be held to.02 seconds of arc( a figure that may represent a theoretical minimum of spread of any beam) the destructive power at the 600 mile range would be 1/20,000 of that at the gun. However, the charged particle beam, unlike the laser, will be subject to even greater deflection by the magnetic, electric and radiation fields found in space. This would make the pin point accuracy, so vital to the Star Wars game, virtually impossible. Here on earth we use either a tracer round or an observed first shot to gauge the windage acting on a shell. The impact point is dependent on the vectorial relationship between the velocity of the projectile as compared to the velocity and the relative direction of the wind. Although wind velocities are slow in comparison to the 2000 mile an hour velocity of the shell, gunners must do elaborate compensations for windage.
In space, the deflecting electro-magnetic fields may collapse or build at the same speed as the beam itself travels. The effect on the impact point would be totally unpredictable. The only solution is to increase the diameter of the cannon to obtain a shotgun effect. Stellar energies would be required, for the propagation of this not yet invented beam, to make up for both the loss due to spread and the wide shotgun effect. To base a defence system on a not yet invented weapon is total lunacy. I hope that at least this part of the Star Wars concept is nothing more than a dis-information smoke screen. Exit the particle beam.
So we are left with the laser. But the enemy just might be smart enough to mirror the missiles. If they did nothing more than crazy glue some aluminized mylar to the missile's surface the power required for destruction would be increased another 33 times. Highly mirrored surfaces reflect over 97% of any radiant energy directed at them. Our laser would now require an output power of 33 times the 8 million times what ever power is necessary to destroy a mirrored target close up to the weapon. Overall efficiencies of the ruby laser in the 1970's was a tremendous .1% with 99.9% being wasted as heat. The gas laser such as was used for the Mt. Haleakali test had even lower efficiencies. They required about 500,000 watts input to become killer weapons. If we multiply this by the energy required because of spread and mirroring we are talking about ... 132 megawatts. Even though the power is required for only a few milliseconds this is still an incredible amount of power. How do we get this much power in a space station? Must we detonate an H-bomb to generate power for each laser shot as was recently suggested by a very skeptical physicist?
To resolve this minor problem our philosophers are going to plasmatize a pocket of air directly in front of the missile and thereby discombobulate the missile with the clap. A clap similar to that which results when lightning cleaves the air. They must know by theory and calculation how devastating this clap is but I have been within 50 yards of where a large lightening bolt impacted the sea and I felt no concussion. They believe that after receiving the clap the little mother will now flutter harmlessly down to the Earth as gently as a maple leaf. This process will need even more energy than the direct vaporisation of the missile. So much power is required that the stations must be located on the ground. I am absolutely positive that Russia won't permit us to locate our Star Wars batteries on her soil so they must be located in our country. But here they can only attack missiles after re-entry and when they are but a few miles short of their intended targets. If I were a rocket scientist, I would equip my missiles with anti-clap protection by installing on each an impact initiated firing circuit. We ought to be very grateful that there are no Russians smart enough to think of this because an atomic bomb that blows up high in the atmosphere will still poison off a few thousand square miles of our territory.
Lasers are generated by the repetitious bouncing of light off the internal mirrors of the laser gun. My question; if we have the power needed to destroy our mirrored target, how in the hell do we keep from destroying the mirrors in our laser cannon at these power levels? Presuming that our philosophers can solve this problem, and the problem of fantastic heat dissipation, our space station has just grown beyond air craft carrier size. My rough guesstimate is that a weapons platform will have to be about half as big as Darth Vader's command ship. After all, it would have to carry an atomic power plant almost as big as the Three Mile Island Complex. And to maintain just the reactor at least 1000 men, with living accommodations, quartermasters stores, mess halls, recreation facilities, etc. But we were told by our brain damaged leader that SDI would not need orbiting atomic power plants.
To protect the 3,000,000 square miles of these United States would require many laser ground batteries with their attendant nuclear power stations. If we had one laser battery, checkerboard fashion, every 10,000 square miles, we would need 300 to cover our country. Under a simultaneous launch condition of only 5,000 missiles, each gun battery would have to destroy or discombobulate, as the case may be, over 15 missiles in a few minutes. Even if we could supply this kind of power the inefficiency of the laser means that 99.9 % of this power must be instantly dissipated as heat. I can see it now - the entire surface of the United States neatly glazed over by vitrification from this wasted heat. And on top of this mess a nice even layer of precipitated nuclear dust and debris. But we won because not one missile reached it's intended target. A Pyrrhic victory indeed!
This article was written because I couldn't believe that my scientific and political leaders could seriously entertain this concept. Recently, Cal Shindel, a California Mensan, called my attention to Tom Beardon (Lieutenant Colonial retired) who has been investigating the work of Tesla. Some of Tesla's experiments pointed to non-Hertzian waves and Beardon has some evidence that while we have suppressed, ridiculed and reviled Tesla's work, the Russians have experimented and have developed these weapons. If these waves (which are contrary to current theory) exist then the age of nuclear bombs may have already ended. The implications are so incredible that I have no words to describe them.
In one man's' opinion, I am beginning to believe that Star Wars is a smoke screen to cover the red faces and white moons of our nation's philosophers after having been caught once more with their pants down. As usual, the ones being successfully conned are the little people of the world in general, and we ... the people of the United States in particular.
This was written in April '85 and time seems to have toned down the Buck Roger's bullshit. Now the main weaponry will be "kinetic energy weapons". In effect they are talking about shotgun pellets or small dardelets. Because of the speed of ICBM's this is going to be the equivalent to stopping a stooping Gosh hawk with a BB gun. Lots of luck guys!
The N.Y. Times carried an article in the April 7, 1987 issue that featured a headline -"SPACE STATION IS STUDIED BY MILITARY". The interesting part is that it describes outer space as having radiation and it speaks of "drugs to prevent and alleviate the effects of radiation may be forthcoming". This is another veiled reference to the radiation of space. How deadly is it? And how did we go to the moon all those years ago? No one seems to realize space stations for defence won't change a thing. They will only provide the excuse for increasing armaments by the maniacs that run both sides. They will just make additional targets to be dealt with when man opts for that final stupidity of all out war.
I believe in weapons, in fact in the country where I am King, all sane and law abiding citizens (male and female) are legally armed to even up the odds because psychotics and criminals always seem to manage to keep and bear arms no matter the law. Not only do we retain a small but powerful army but every citizen is trained to be a warrior. In my country where I am the King, we limit our weapons to only those needed to kill every body else in the world one time. Enough is enough - stop with the warheads already!
The Russians and the USA have since signed a treaty that begins to address this humongous problem. I cannot believe that the bad actor-Reagan (ever watch his old movies) we call the President has actually accomplished this. I knew the man had balls but I was very suspicious of the brain.
The following news article was printed after this article was supposed to have been published. On the April, 23,1987 the "New York Times" carried a headline that read:
PHYSICIST'S EXPRESS 'STAR WARS' DOUBT; LONG DELAYS SEEN.
The American Physical Society, the nation's largest professional society for physicists will report later today "that so many breakthroughs are required to develop laser & particle beam weapons for the proposed "Star Wars" anti-missile system that it will take a decade just to determine whether the job can be done."
The report will also include the fact that there are "significant gaps" in scientific technological understanding and that "the crucial technologies would have to improve by factors ranging from 100 to more than a million, a scaling up that may or may not be achievable". Also was the disclosure; "for the first time that many space-based platforms would require nuclear reactors for power."
The June '87 "Scientific American" carried an article, in the Science And The Citizen section, called "SDI Zapped" which provided further vindication of my logic and analysis of this so-called defence plan. Both articles vindicated my work and except for the fact that they should have been released later, I feel very pleased that another bunch of my "wild" guesses should have turned out so accurate. The plain fact is that my article covered more ground.
The Loompanics company of Port Townsend, WA deals in books that repressors would love to burn. Not pornography but books that carry all kinds of strange information. Naturally I get their catalogs. One catalog carried an article about Star Wars by Ben G. Price who maintains that although Star Wars technology will never stop a war or very many missiles it will make the ultimate totalitarian control weapon. By "popular demand" it would first be deployed against drug smugglers, then by providing inexpensive 24 hour surveillance it would be turned on "enemies" of the state. It could possibly be adapted to terminate individuals or groups by space born small weapons fire. Before you cheer, please remember that in a totalitarian state anyone not born into one of the ruling families or who lacks a perfect slave mentality becomes, sooner or later, an enemy of the state. Little did I realize when I read this that Starwars was a screen to hide the fact that we were already under optical surveillance by a dozen huge space telescopes called Keyholes.
* This article was written about 5 years before I discovered that NASA had lied about the Apollo missions.
Repeat after me:
THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY!
THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY!
THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY!
Ralph Rene · 3321 West Weir Road · Scottsburg · IN · 47170 · USA